zkSync Era, a layer 2 of Ethereum, recently surpassed its parent blockchain in terms of monthly transactions, recording 34.67 million transactions over the last 30 days. This is the first time ever that the Ethereum blockchain has been overtaken by one of its layer 2s on this metric. What’s the reason for this sudden rise?
Layer 2 zkSync overtakes Ethereum in terms of monthly transactions
zkSync Era, an Ethereum layer 2, has just overtaken its parent blockchain in terms of monthly transactions, with 34.67 million transactions recorded over the last 30 days. By way of comparison, the Ethereum blockchain recorded 34.16 million transactions over the same period, followed by Arbitrum One with 31.43 million.
Ranking of layer 2s recording the most transactions over the last 30 days compared with Ethereum
This event is particularly noteworthy in that it marks the first time that Ethereum has been overtaken by one of its layer 2s in terms of monthly transactions.
However, it’s hard to say that zkSync Era is likely to stay ahead of Ethereum on this metric for the next few months. Indeed, this growth is not really organic, since it is mainly the result of the success of layer 2 registrations.
In fact, a peak in the number of transactions can easily be spotted on December 16, when registrations were deployed on zkSync Era:
Comparison of the number of transactions between zkSync Era and the Ethereum blockchain
As with Bitcoin registrations, made possible by the Taproot and SegWit updates, zkSync registrations (and all blockchains) allow you to enter different types of data directly into the blockchain. As such, they are considered “digital artifacts”, not non-fungible tokens (NFT).
Although registrations actually have little use, their success on zkSync can be attributed to the airdrop rumor surrounding Layer 2, which to date has yet to launch its own token.
Based on ZK Rollups technology, zkSync Era aggregates hundreds of off-chain transactions while delivering a cryptographic proof in parallel on Ethereum, drastically reducing transaction costs.
Recently, zkSync joined the Chainlink Scale program to promote its development in the best possible conditions, notably by taking advantage of Chainlink’s oracles and reduced transaction costs thanks to its nodes.
